ESTP
Legendary comedian Eddie Murphy is back, for how long who knows but his recent comeback on Saturday Night Live (SNL) and “Coming 2 America” (a sequel to the original Coming to America) exceeded my expectations. If anything it was refreshing to see some old school talent totally crush it.
Some of my other all time faves are “Beverly Hills Cop“, “48 Hours“, “Another 48 hours“, “Dr. Doolittle“, yeah even “Norbit” are some of my all time faves. Eddie Murphy took a break from showbiz for a long while though and his return to the big stage made me want to dig into his personality type.
I’ve always had confidence. It came because I have lots of initiative. I wanted to make something of myself.
Eddie Murphy
Confidence, initiative and “making something of myself” – there’s a lot we can unpack from just that Eddie Murphy quote alone. If you want to take a look at Eddie Murphy’s appearance on several talk shows, have at it – we can spend a lot of time analyzing Eddie from those clips. For me though, it’s pretty clear Eddie Murphy is an ESTP though ESFP can also be a good argument. One things for sure though, Eddie Murphy is an Se (Extraverted Sensing) dominant user. Both ESTP’s and ESFP’s truly thrive when they DO things, and sometimes the direction doesn’t matter so long as they are doing something. This is due to their inferior Ni, and so they will attempt to bring or (eventually) find meaning in the things they do.
ESTP’s though, have Introverted Thinking (Ti) as an auxiliary parent function while ESFP’s have Fi (Introverted Feeling) as their parent function. It’s the parent function that made me lean toward ESTP over ESFP, because Ti coupled with Se can be extremely precise in timing things, in a fun way usually in the form of story telling. Not to say Fi is in capable of this in ESFP’s – it’s just that Ti’s are much more informative with their content. Fi in ESFP’s manifest themselves by way of charisma, much feeling (emotion, enigma) is embedded in the things they do.
As mentioned earlier, their inferior Ni (Introverted Intuition) (though not fully relied on in early years) begins to reveal itself in later years. For Eddie Murphy, this is truly telling in one of his quotes –
“All inspiration comes from a higher power. The body is a shell. The creative spot is from God – You hear voices, everybody does. When you get older, you refer to it as intuition.”
Eddie Murphy
I think Eddie Murphy is using his Ti here when he mentions God (Eddie’s chosen basis for absolute Truth), but soften things up (Fe) for the general masses by calling it intuition (Ni), all enclosed within a shell (Se). I hope you can see the cognitive chain there. This is inferior Ni realized but for the ESTP, wrestling and favoring those fuzzy intuitions over their usual go to 5 senses (Se) and logic (Ti) can make the ESTP uneasy, though its still running in the background. This holds true for all functions stacks, just depends which functions sit polar of each other.
The child function, Fe (extraverted feeling) is what sits on Eddie Murphy’s third slot. And sometimes the child function is overlooked, so I’ll explain why this matters for the ESTP. Fe (extraverted feeling) is concerned with how everyone else is feeling (not their own) and since it sits as the child function for Eddie, they can sometimes over extend themselves in trying to please/win the audience. But as mentioned earlier, Ti sits as the parent function (above Fe) and so child Fe is often kept in check, that’s assuming Ti parent is on the right track. For Eddie Murphy and his stand ups, this is heavily used in determining what the audience crave for, Fe becomes that feedback looping machine.
Finally looping back to Eddie’s long break from Hollywood and standup, I believe inferior Ni (introverted intuition) is responsible for this after DOING standup for so long. Sooner or later the ESTP if successful in carrying out its Se, Ti, Fe plans will begin nurturing Ni. Once this is accomplished, the ESTP will find refuge in its earnings, a more relaxed ESTP will begin to emerge. It’s worth mentioning, this is assuming you’ve developed into a healthy seasoned ESTP, Eddie Murphy is a good example of this.
“I’m relaxed about my career. I’ve been making movies for over 20 years, so I’ve earned at least the right to relax.”
Eddie Murphy
